Oblomov

One morning, in a flat in one of the great buildings in Gorokliovaia Street, the population of which was sufficient to constitute that of a provincial town, there was lying in bed a gentleman named Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov.

Four-part arc from couch to country estate to Olga's challenge to decline and death — plot is less event-chain than diagnostic case study; the dream of Oblomovka and the Stolz/Olga interventions provide the only real propulsion, so plot scores 88.

The reason was that there had come into his life two friends of Schtoltz's, in the shape of a pretty girl named Olga Sergievna Ilyinitch and her aunt. On his first visit to them he was overcome with constraint.

Oblomov the archetype of cultivated inertia, Stolz the active reformer, Olga the awakening force, Zakhar the faithful servant, Tarantiev the sponger — each figure externalizes a facet of Russian gentry paralysis, so cast scores 90.

Oblomov's indoor costume corresponded exactly with the quiet outlines of his face and the effeminacy of his form. The costume in question consisted of a dressing-gown of some Persian material--a real Eastern dressing-gown.

Deliberate to a fault — the opening chapters on the sofa and the Oblomovka reverie test patience before Part III accelerates; tempo matches the subject (sloth) rather than thriller convention, so pace scores 79.

True, it was a dressing-gown which had lost its pristine freshness, and had, in places, exchanged its natural, original sheen for one acquired by hard wear; yet still it retained both the clarity of its Oriental colouring and the soundness of its texture.

Goncharov's lucid, ironical realism — the flat on Gorokliovaia Street, the dressing-gown, the snow-watching — fuses comedy and tragedy without sentimentality, so prose scores 91.

In fact, the supervision of food was the first and the principal domestic preoccupation of Oblomovka. What calves were not fattened for the year's festivals! What poultry was not reared!

St. Petersburg flats, Oblomovka estate, Olga's garden, the Veaborg Quarter — provincial gentry Russia as moral geography of comfort versus duty; the sofa as national emblem, so world scores 89.

One morning, in a flat in one of the great buildings in Gorokliovaia Street, the population of which was sufficient to constitute that of a provincial town, there was lying in bed a gentleman named Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov.

Part I opening — Oblomov in bed while life passes — establishes the thesis immediately; ignition is conceptual (who is this man?) rather than sensational, so hook scores 84.

"The cause?" re-echoed Schtoltz. "The cause was--the disease of Oblomovka." "The disease of Oblomovka?" queried the literary gentleman in some perplexity. "What is that?"

Named a social disease ('Oblomovka') and created the definitive literary sloth-hero — every subsequent couch-potato protagonist descends from this dressing-gown, so innov scores 93.

A second stroke of apoplexy occurred within a year of the first, and, like its precursor, passed away favourably. Later, however, Oblomov became pale and weak, took to eating little and seldom walking in the garden.

Frame coda with Schtoltz naming 'the disease of Oblomovka' — structurally double: Oblomov's physical decline and the posthumous diagnosis; complete though the final line trails into editorial note in this edition, so ending scores 87.